Psilopterus Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓Psilopterus bachmanni is the smallest known terror bird ever discovered, standing just 70-80 cm tall and weighing around 5 kg, roughly the same as a large domestic cat.
• ✓Fossil evidence from Uruguay suggests Psilopterus may have survived until just 96,040 years ago, which means it was alive at the same time as early modern humans who had already reached South America.
• ✓While its giant relatives like Kelenken and Titanis went extinct millions of years earlier, tiny Psilopterus kept going, outlasting all of its terror bird cousins by millions of years.
• ✓Despite being a terror bird, Psilopterus was so small and lightly built that scientists describe it as 'gracile,' meaning slender and delicate compared to its massive, bone-crushing relatives.
• ✓Psilopterus belongs to the subfamily Psilopterinae, a group of smaller, faster terror birds that may have hunted insects and small lizards rather than the large prey targeted by bigger phorusrhacids.